Understrike

by John Gardner

  “Something up?” He repeated Mostyn’s words as though they had been spoken in a dead language. It was unfortunate that his secretary chose that moment to tap at the door and enter with the afternoon tea tray.

  “Your tea, sir.”

  The Chief’s reply was not so much obscene as magnificently unprintable. In an admirable speech of some forty words he outlined half-a-dozen new, and hitherto untried, diversions which he suggested his secretary might try with teacup, saucer and three different brands of tea—including his own favourite Choice Rich Assam.

  The secretary—a blonde whose bombshell had exploded several years previously—had been subjected to many such humiliating moments during her service with the top brass of Special Security. She stood passively holding the tray until the Chief stopped speaking.

  “Here, or my office?” she asked, unsmiling.

  “Go to hell!” said the Chief.

  “Very good, sir.”

  The Chief made a mental note to buy her a dozen pairs of nylons in the morning.

  In the silence which followed the secretary’s departure Mostyn looked down at his elegantly-shod feet and noticed that there was a graze in the centre of the buffalo-hide toe cap of his left shoe. The Chief went over to the window and stared out at the steady stream of June rain which hissed upon London.

  “What seems to be the matter, Chief?” Mostyn was the first to speak.

  The Chief answered without turning from the window.

  “Dudley’s dead.”

  Mostyn opened his mouth, but no words came. The news had the surprise effect of an unexpected punch above the heart. For years he had known and liked Dudley—their Field Security Expert with the US High Command in Washington. In the old days they had worked together. Mostyn’s stomach contracted. Dudley was about his age. Strange that, in a business where life was not particularly expensive, the death of a contemporary could give you that dreadful chill intimation of your own mortality.

  “It’s a bastard.” The Chief’s voice was unusually soft. Dudley had been one of his particular favourites.

  Mostyn took a deep breath: “Accident or ...?”

  “Oh, accident.” The Chief waved away any thought of underground enemy action. “Car smash—‘automobile wreck’ the long-winded twits called it. On Route 66 last night. He was on his way to San Diego. That’s our stinkin’ problem.”

  “San Diego?”

  “San Diego. Gateway to Mexico. Home of the United States Pacific Fleet.” The Chief turned and rested his fat buttocks against the window-sill. “And next week—in seven days’ time—that is where they will be doin’ the firin’ trails with Playboy.”

  “Oh!” Mostyn began to realise the implications.

  “Yes. Bloody oh! Brand spankin’ new atomic submarine, launchin’ platform for the ... the ...” He paused, his mind feeling its way gingerly through a layer of alcohol. “... the ... what’s the name of the blasted weapon?”

  “The Trepholite.”

  “The Trephol-bloody-ite. Daft bleedin’ name to give a missile.”

  “Biggest sea-to-ground-sea-to-air-sea-to-sea bang yet,” murmured Mostyn: a simple statement of fact.

  “So the damn Yanks say. Believe it when I see it.” The Chief coughed, looked up and added hastily: “Not that I will be able to damn well see it. Can’t possibly get away. Realise that, don’t you?” His voice pleaded for Mostyn’s confirmation of this last remark. The Chief did not like the United States, and those citizens of the United States who were forced into occasional contact with the Chief did not take well to him.

  “Good gracious, no, sir. You can’t possibly go,” drawled the Second-in-Command, his voice taking on the calm velvet of reassurance. There was a three beats’ silence.

  “Spot of whisky?” said the Chief, his face settling into a satisfied smirk.

  “Not at the moment, sir. Thanks all the same.” Mostyn could have used a quart of whisky, but when the Chief was as tricky as this, it was better to keep the brain reasonably agile.

  The Chief had the drinks cupboard—high behind his desk—half open. Mostyn hesitated for about five seconds after refusing the proferred spirits. Then, very quietly, with a sprinkle of grated cheese round the larynx, “I might add, sir, that I cannot go either. Far too much on the boil in Europe.”

  “Understood, me dear chap.” The Chief was changing his tactics. “Quite understood. Wouldn’t expect to turf you out of London at this time of the year—‘cept for something of Top import. Sure you won’t have a snort?” He was slopping himself a large Chivas Regal.

  “Quite sure.” Mostyn shut his mouth firmly in a tight smile on the word ‘sure’.

  “Trouble is,” said the Chief dropping into his swivel chair, and taking a long pull at his drink, “trouble is, who, by all the holy monks of great renown, is going to go?”

  “Who indeed?” said Mostyn benignly.

  The Chief sighed. “There’s the bleedin’ rub, as the Bard has it. Got to be an experienced operational officer, F05: that’s essential—treaty instructions and all that cock.” There was another short pause. Mostyn felt an aura of danger pass between them. The Chief looked up at him from under those great brows—once the scourge of many a gunroom. “Took the liberty of checkin’ your operational list, old man. Bit thin on the ground, aren’t you?”

  “Suppose we are, sir. But the new continual surveillance on Cabinet Ministers—since Operation Keelroll—takes a fair slice of my boys... .”

  “I’m not criticisin’.” The Chief cut in with the right hand raised pontifically and voice spiked with a pipette load of acid. They looked at one another, the space between throbbing a checkmate atmosphere.

  At last Mostyn found himself being stared out. He shifted his gaze back to the blemish on his buffalo-hide. A minute slid by unseen and unheard.

  “There is just one possibility ...” he began; then, with a sharp and definitive change of mind, continued, “No! No! No! No, that wouldn’t really do.”

  He started to pace up and down: an effete fascimile of his superior. The Chief was getting irritated again; his clenched fist pounding the desk top to a slow steady rhythm.

  “Come on, Mostyn. What’s on your mind? We’re pushed, laddie, and the old grey matter’s not functioning as smoothly as it might.” He swallowed the remainder of his whisky in an enormous gulp and leaned over the desk. “If we do not have someone on the Official Observer’s list for next week, the Ministry might start askin’ questions about our strength. Maybe the Treasury will have a go as well. Think where that could land us.”

  Mostyn thought—quickly. The idea of the Treasury poking their serrated gold beaks into the internal finances of the Department was enough to bring even Mostyn heavily up against the true heart of the matter. He took a deep breath and began to blurt, somewhat pompously:

  “‘L’ will be in New York tomorrow: delivering the July code corrections. But it’s ridiculous, he doesn’t know a conning tower from a cowslip ...”

  “Aren’t called conning towers any more. Not in nuclear submarines,” said the Chief sharply. “Called sails. Anyway, shouldn’t have really thought it mattered if he couldn’t tell a WREN’S brassière from a quarantine flag. Thing is, he’s an experienced operator. Don’t see why we can’t use him.”

  “Oh, Boysie’s all right,” said Mostyn uncertainly. “Only, well, you know he’s inclined to be on the careless side.”

  “Good great Nelson’s braces, the fella’s only got to sit in a fornicatin’ submarine and look at a pulsatin’ radar screen.”

  “He’ll have to write a report.”

  “You can help ‘im with that, can’t you? Blast it, fly ‘im back here as soon as it’s all over. He tells you what he saw and you put it in the right lingo. Damn it man, he’s a godsend. Probably get on with the Yanks like a pig in a mire. Can’t understand why you’ve lost faith in the bloke. Saved all our bacon with the Coronet thing.”

  “Well ...” Mostyn’s mind had subsided into a picture of
Boysie full fathom five behind the armoured hull of a nuclear submarine. When you knew Boysie you were naturally conscious of the hundred and one things that could go wrong. The dream progressed with astonishing rapidity. Now Boysie had got up from his radar screen to be sick, or pee, or something; his hand had accidentally touched a button, and the Trepholite had gone blazing up out of the blue Pacific to land flaming on New York—in the rush hour. Mostyn was beginning to sweat. Why was it that Boysie always did this to him? It was bad enough in the old days, but since that last bit of trouble even the most simple job given to Boysie brought Mostyn out in the singing terrors.

  The Chief sliced cleanly into the daymare: “Gettin’ nowhere, so I’m goin’ to give you a direct order. ‘L’ is over there. Right? If ‘L’ don’t go on to San Diego as our bleedin’ observer, then I shall have to send you. Right?”

  Mostyn groaned internally, “As you say, sir. Right.” His intuition told him that neither this day nor those immediately following were going to be particularly good. “I’ll set up a contact for briefing in New York and cable San Diego and Boysie,” he said wearily. “I expect they’ll arrange for a courier to take him down there. But if he does manage to louse it up, then I’m not going to take the responsibility. This is being done under your direct orders, sir.”

  “Ah!” said the Chief. “Where’s that fat-arsed girl with the tea?”

  As Mostyn got to the door, the Chief called out, “Do me a favour, will you.” Mostyn turned. The Chief was looking suddenly older and his bright little eyes were strangely watery. “Fix up a wreath for Dudley,” said the Chief quietly. The two men looked at one another in mutual understanding. Mostyn nodded and went out.

  *

  Back in his office, Mostyn pressed the buzzer for his secretary, ordered tea, and sent her down for the photostats of Dudley’s briefing for the Playboy firing trials. The documents ran into six foolscap pages of opaque jargon, from which the Second-in-Command gleaned nothing fresh about America’s latest nuclear-powered launching pad. From the statistics at the end of her sea trials, Playboy was very fast and, on paper, an admirable ramp for the Trepholite—a missile about which there were no statistics, only rumours carried back and forth by worried-looking Naval Attachés. And if these ruddy-faced, preoccupied young men from the Admiralty were anything to go by (Mostyn contemplated), the Trepholite was the supreme deterrent. Literally the last word. So the firing trials from its undersea emplacement were of considerable importance to everyone’s peace of mind.

  The final page outlined the duties of Special Security’s observer, and with it came hope. Boysie would be one of eight experts—and inexperts—who had to sit sober on board Playboy while the Weapons Officer lit the blue touch paper (metaphorically speaking). It was also heartening to see that the Trepholite would be fired “cold”—without its holocaustic warhead. Perhaps the Chief was right. Even though this was far from Boysie’s usual line of country, he couldn’t really get into any trouble. As for the report, well the American boys would feed him a certain amount of data and, if the worst came to the worst, the Department could, with a little subtle persuasion, always get their grubby hands on a copy of the Admiralty observer’s report before Boysie wrote his. The important thing was they should have someone from the Department actually there in the flesh; and, whatever else you could say about Boysie, he was very expert in the flesh.

  An hour later, Mostyn came to the conclusion that Boysie’s presence in San Diego would simply be nominal. A couple of quick gins at the club on his way home should soon dispel the tiny lone butterfly that fluttered angrily at the back of Mostyn’s conscience. Again he buzzed his secretary, and began to fill in a set of cablegram forms: one to the Chief of US Naval Security, North Island, San Diego; one to his opposite number at the Pentagon; one to their undercover man in New York (a personality unknown to all departments of US Intelligence, including the CIA. Such is the trust of allies): and one to Mr Brian Oakes, passenger on board the Queen Elizabeth. Mostyn sealed each of the buff forms in a separate envelope, initialled them and added the requisite code designations. The first two were marked Top Sec A; the latter couple Sub-Text: Normal.

  His secretary, a bouncily efficient girl with undisguised false breasts, carried the forms up to the top floor and handed them to the Duty Cypher Officer. In the Cypher Room—where, behind double metal doors, Britain’s secrets and clandestine orders are filtered out in a jumble of letters—the daughter of a retired Major-General translated Mostyn’s scrawl into the required coding series. Boysie’s cablegram remained almost as Mostyn had written it:

  RETURN PASSAGE POSTPONED STOP DELIVER ORDER AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS REFERENCE OPENING NEW SALES AREA STOP BRANCH MANAGER TO CALL AT YOUR HOTEL STOP DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE STOP REGARDS UNCLE

  Boysie’s cablegram was handed to one of the trainee cypher operators. He left the building ten minutes later and within half an hour telephoned the message through the ordinary GPO channels from a Paddington number. Boysie’s instructions were off on their journey to the Queen Elizabeth’s radio room. On arrival, the cablegram lay in the delivery tray—with seven other freshly-received personal messages—for half an hour before being popped into its little crested envelope and hurried down to Cabin B236. From the moment it left Mostyn’s hand to the time Boysie hurriedly tore it open at least twelve people had seen its contents.

  *

  They got Khavichev out of bed around two-thirty in the morning. He gave three sets of orders over the scrambler telephone in his night office and went back to bed. The time had come and it could not have happened at a more judicious moment. Tomorrow there would be much to do. The organisation had to be foolproof.

  *

  Just before they woke him, in the villa on the outskirts of the city. Vladimir Solev had been dreaming of the dark Ukrainian girl who had been his guest on the previous evening. At first he thought it was her hand on his shoulder, shaking him up from the warmth of sleep. But it was his staff instructor. He was to be in the briefing room in one hour. He would be going on a journey and there would be further orders on arrival. The situation—his instructor told him, sitting on the bed like a sick visitor—was fluid. But there was little doubt that the training was going to be put to the test. His glorious moment would soon come.

  Vladimir Solev—Boysie Oakes’ double—felt his stomach rise. He heaved noisily, and quite effectively, into his handkerchief.

  *

  Boysie read the cablegram twice. Once, standing by the wash basin, where he had just been completing his morning shave when the steward arrived with the white envelope on a silver tray. Again, slumped—a quivering, boneless jelly in his armchair after croaking “No reply” in the wake of the departing flunkey. Boysie could understand why those Old Testament kings used to exterminate bearers of bad tidings. He had taken an almost homicidal dislike to the wretched man who had delivered this Boysie-changing slip of paper.

  Unlike Solev, Boysie had no use for his handkerchief. For ten minutes he retched out his fear into the basin—moaning in anguish and accidentally upsetting a bottle of Floris 89 toilet water on to the cabin floor where it left a damp circle of fragrance which later caused the cabin steward to raise his eyebrows a little higher than usual. Boysie had not felt like this for months. His hands were shaking; his bowels seemed to contain a small electric mixer, turned to top speed and operating a dough hook; his heart was thudding audibly under the sea island cotton vest; and his throat felt as though someone was titillating his uvula with a cotton-wool swab.

  He was all too familiar with the symptoms. The diagnosis was simple—stark, staring, yellow fear in a massive overdose. In the months that had passed since the Chief—via Mostyn—had taken him off the liquidating assignments, Boysie had never really allowed himself to think about possible reactions to any dangerous operation that the Department might put in his way.

  Life had been quiet, gay and good. Boysie had felt that if Mostyn ever came up with a diabolical scheme that was beyond his sm
all, nervous, neurotic powers, he could always spin a neat excuse from his cunning mind and so slide out of the Department for good and all.

  But now it was here. Right out of the cloudless blue, the dark business of having to work near death had caught him unawares. There was no mistaking the cablegram. It could mean one thing only. An operation, of some kind, was brewing. An operation earmarked specially for Boysie. And Boysie knew, through bitter experience, that in the Department operations were dangerous. Blue funking dangerous. For the hundredth time since he had been eased into the Department, Boysie wondered how he had managed to get mixed up in the game at all.

  “Bloody hell!” he groaned to himself. “Oh bloody, bloody hell. Why didn’t I get out of it after the last little lot?” He looked blankly round the cabin which seemed despicably normal. The old cry of fear was ripping him apart: and he did not even know what the operation was. BRANCH MANAGER TO CALL AT YOUR HOTEL contained the key to unknown terrors. Boysie’s mind started to dwell deeply on the possibilities. He might easily be left waiting for this “Branch Manager” for a week or two—Mostyn had always been an inconsiderate bastard—and, to be left cooling one’s heels would only increase the nervous tension. A myriad pictures weaved through Boysie’s pregnant imagination. He saw himself being shot at by hulking great men in slouch hats and raincoats; chased over scaffolding, mountain high above the city; roped and gagged in a cellar crawling with puce spiders (at the very thought of spiders, Boysie was attacked by what looked like the rectangular twitch); pushed into a swimming bath containing a red-eyed octopus; and put to the torture by a voluptuous negress. He lingered over this last, for the negress turned out to be a diverting girl. At least it was a sign that the initial impact of fear was passing. Slowly, Boysie began turning his mind from the horrors. In their place stood the short, compact, oily, curly-haired figure of Mostyn—his immediate boss. In times of stress Boysie always took comfort in railing silently upon Mostyn. Now he railed—with a selection of oaths and curses that would not have disgraced a joint meeting of Macbeth’s Witches and the most proficient members of the Billingsgate Bad Language League.